Habitat Unit

DESIGN STUDIO, SoSe 2019
Prof. Dr. Philipp Misselwitz, M.Sc. Aine Ryan, Dr. Vittoria Capresi

Rural Transformations: Shifting Ingrained Spatialities, Practices, Alliances

Post-socialist rural settlements are often facing multiple challenges which in part are the consequence of various ruptures such as the 1950s collectivisation or post 1990s neo-liberalisation and globalisation of agriculture. Villages face dramatic depopulation and unemployment resulting from structural transitions towards a highly mechanised agricultural economy, and carry the burdens of inadequate and expensive infrastructure or environmental protection policies. Plans and strategies for the future cannot seem to break from the past: meeting near-future demands of neighbouring city populations, and even global agricultural businesses, seems to be the go- to strategy, even when this only brings a very fragile win, if at all.

This studio will study 5 villages in the South-Oderbuch area of Brandenburg – which is the case study area of the MODSCAPES research* – to understand their logics in terms of landownership,
socio-cultural practices, and political/community alliances. Mapping-based fieldwork will employ qualitative and quantitative methods of enquiry and representations to reveal these logics at the landscape scale, and in the settlement morphologies, spatial typologies, and architectural articulations. Building on this very grounded analysis, the studio will explore an alternative future-planning strategy, proposing interventions that respond in spatial programme and form to local needs realisable within current local logics.

Poster Rural Transformations

* The studio is in collaboration with MODSCAPES - an ongoing EU-funded research project at the Habitat Unit on the process of modernisation of the rural landscape during the GDR
and its tangible and intangible legacies today.

Final Presentation

Thursday 11.07.2019
10 am - 2 pm
Room A202, Institute for Architecture

Course Information+

Design Studio
BA Arch 10 ECTS
BA Arch Entwerfen und Baukonstruktion IV

Open Studio
April 2nd, 2019, 2pm, A202

Teaching Day Thursday 10am, A 202

First meeting
April 11th, 2019, 10am, A 202

Application Aufgabe 0

Aufgabe Null+
Contact+

M.Sc. Aine Ryan
a.ryan@tu-berlin.de

Room A 621

T + 49 – 30 – 314 – 21830
F + 49 – 30 – 314 – 21907